Hey guys, it’s Dr. Kosterman at Kosterman Chiropractic in Cary. We’re talking about the jaw primarily. Everyone calls it TMJ. It’s actually TMJD. Not trying to be pushy or correct you at all, but TMJ means temporomandibular joint. Temporomandibular joint dysfunction is the problem.
How Common Is TMJ Dysfunction?
Your jaw hurts, right? It’s the second most common musculoskeletal problem behind back pain. Right? It’s wild just to hear that fact.
It’s two to three times more common in females. The good news is 75 to 90% of it can resolve easily with conservative care. Chiropractic care, the things we do in the office, would be conservative care.
But if you have it, you know, your face can hurt, your jaw can hurt, you have trouble eating a big juicy hamburger, opening your mouth can be painful, and eating an apple can be very painful, all because you have some dysfunction in one side or both sides of your jaw.
What Causes TMJ Dysfunction?
So, think of it. TMJ is the mandible and the skull, the temporal bone here, coming together to form a joint. There’s muscles, there’s tissue around it, and then there’s this tiny disc in there.
So, the source of pain can come from many areas. It can come from the muscles being out of balance. It can come from the disc inside if there’s been enough stress on it for years. It can be from arthritis or damage in that joint.
But in order for that symphony to happen, where the joint opens evenly and glides evenly and everything doesn’t bind up or grind or irritate, you have to have balance.
How Posture Affects Your Jaw
Posture is important as well. So, if your head gets pushed out far, then that’s going to throw off the mechanics of the jaw, and you’re going to have some issues there.
You even know, if you’ve known someone or you yourself have had TMJ for a while, you can actually have changes in your appearance, your facial structure. You can have more swelling on the side, or it can change the way your face looks over time, which obviously is motivating for everyone if you have TMJ to get it fixed as soon as you can.
But essentially, there’s an imbalance in there.
How We Evaluate TMJ Dysfunction at Kosterman Chiropractic
So, what we seek to do in our office is we want to find the cause of it.
We look at the entire picture of it. We look at the neck, we look at how your posture is up top, and then we obviously go through more of the orthopedic tests in the spine as well to find out what’s causing it.
How We Address TMJ Dysfunction
But how do we address it?
We use a couple of instruments to help restore motion in the joint to get things moving again.
If there’s scar tissue or what we call adhesions in there, we want to break that up in the joint to get things moving more fluidly.
The Connection Between TMJ Dysfunction and Ringing in the Ears
We often have patients that come in that have tinnitus, a fancy way of saying ringing of the ears. And if you have that, it’s pretty miserable.
Actually, that can come from inflammation, stress, and swelling in the muscles or the joint itself because you have two cranial nerves that are located in the same area, cranial nerve five and cranial nerve seven.
So, if those nerves get irritated, they innervate those muscles inside the ear, and if they’re irritated enough, you can get what’s called tinnitus, or tinnitus, as some people call it.
Drives them crazy.
Restoring Motion and Balance to the Jaw
But at any rate, at Kosterman Chiropractic in Cary, we’re really good at addressing all of these things and developing a plan for you in office, outside of office, postural changes, things like that, to make these changes so that over time that jaw will calm down, right?
And you can restore motion and balance to it. Pain decreases, and you’re much happier, and then you can get back to eating apples and burgers and all the things that are delicious.
But if you need some help, come see us. We’d be happy to help you.
Thanks for listening. If you need anything from us ever at all, just give us a call or walk in the door.
See you soon.
